


Lumpy Elbows

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Series: Thunderbirds Prompts [17]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, hydrofoil crash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4204215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>http://obscenelybefuddled.tumblr.com/post/122190170941/i-swear-i-can-handle-it-ok-i-drew-gordon-gave-him</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fender bender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cordiallysent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordiallysent/gifts).



“North Colorado Medical Center, this is International Rescue calling Emergency Medical Dispatch, do you copy?”

“Receiving you, International Rescue, what’s your emergency?” The holocomm in Thunderbird 2’s cockpit displays a pert young woman, blonde, green-eyed.  _Pretty_ , Virgil thinks,  _Gordon’s type. He should be up here flirting with her._

“I’ve got an injured crewman–”  _My brother. Because I screwed up, I made a bad call, and now this is going to be **awful**._  “–I’ve forwarded you my vehicle stats, I need to know if I’m clear to land on your helipad. We’re three minutes out.”

There’s a flicker of the woman’s gaze over some screen Virgil can’t see and she nods. “You’re within our weight limit–barely. Can you give me more details for triage?”

Virgil winces as he hears Alan’s voice, halfway between coaxing and pleading, and drifting up from the half-lowered cargo lift. Gordon’s in the hold, with Alan looking after him. Alan’s okay, but if Gordon hadn’t been there he wouldn’t be. “–broken arm, probable concussion, possible internal bleeding–” He sighs heavily, even as he starts his approach. “You’re gonna wanna send a couple extra orderlies. Maybe–I don’t know, be ready to sedate him. This’ll be rough.”

“We don’t typically–”

“Trust me,” Virgil interrupts, grim. “You’re gonna need a few more pairs of hands.”

* * *

It’s gotten quiet in the hold by the time Virgil takes the lift down. Gordon’s huddled in the furthest corner from the door, and he can’t seem to stifle a sob over the pneumatic hiss of the lift. Alan’s hovering nearby and his blue eyes are wide and frightened. “Easy, little brother,” Virgil starts, as his boots hit the floor of the hold. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder at Alan, to get him to open the hatch. Alan scurries away and the relief that Virgil’s taking over is clear in his eyes.

“Gordon,” Virgil leads in again, approaching and crouching down. “Gordon, it’ll be okay. C'mon, squirt. look at me.”“

” _No_.“ Mumbled, a blank refusal. Gordon’s tucked his broken arm close against his chest, the elbow lumpy and distended. His face is bloody, a gash below his eye from the pod crash, the eyelid swollen half-shut and blossoming into a dark, ugly bruise. His voice is thick, slurring, and as his head jerks up, the eye he can still see out of doesn’t quite focus, staring and wild. "Virgil. They’ll cut me open again. Virgil,  _please_  no. Please,  _please_ , I don’t wanna be cut up anymore. I don’t. I  _can’t_.”

“Gordy, it won’t be like before. I promise.”

Gordon doesn’t remember the hydrofoil crash. None of it. As far as they’ve been able to tell, Gordon’s memory of what happened doesn’t pick up until a week after he’d come out of a medically induced coma. From that point on it’s a haze of nightmarish hallucinations from a myriad of painkillers, in and out of surgery, his world shrunk down into agony and terror and a fractured perception of reality. It’s still up for debate as to when exactly Gordon had managed to go back to being Gordon. There are times like now–in the throes of post-traumatic flashbacks, when he’s nearly numb with panic–when he loses himself again.

“Shh. Shh, Gordy, no one’s gonna cut you open. It’s okay.” Virgil modulates his tone down a few decibels, soft and reassuring, even as he creeps closer to his brother. TB2’s hydraulics whine as Alan starts to open the hatch and Gordon crumples, breaking down against the back wall with a choking moan of pain and fear. Virgil closes the distance between them and presses a hand into Gordon’s thick blond hair. “Was just a little accident, Gordon, just a fenderbender. You rolled a pod, you hit your head, maybe busted your arm. That’s all. This isn’t like the crash.”

It’s  _damn_  hard to get Gordon into a hospital.

“Back here.”

Alan’s ushering a crew of four EMT’s into the cargo bay and Gordon’s good hand seizes a handful of Virgil’s sleeve, clinging and frantic, even as the middle child carefully gets an arm around his lower back, starts to drag him out of the corner. He holds a hand up to stay the first two paramedics from stepping in. They’ll only spook him.

Gordon’s plenty spooked already and his breathing is harsh, uncontrolled between broken sobbing. “ _Don’t_. Virgil,  _don’t_. Stop. Stop,  _please_. I wanna go home. Let’s just go Virge, w-we can just go  _home_.”

Alan, unnecessarily, but because he’s been fairly shaken up by this whole ordeal, pipes up with his voice breaking, “Don’t hurt him, Virge.”

“No one’s going to hurt him,” Virgil answers firmly, though he’s glanced over his shoulder and gestured to one of the paramedics to come forward. He can see the syringe in the man’s hand, and it’s probably the easiest solution. “Gordy, they’re here to help. Right?”

Gordon’s gone. Whatever’s left in his place is pulling away, gasping himself into hyperventilation, struggling in Virgil’s grasp, though this is utterly futile. His heels hit the diamond plate floor of the cargo hold, scrabble for purchase and fail to gain it. He lets out a faint, desperate sound and sags, giving up, even as Virgil gets ahold of his arms, minding his broken forearm, to hold him still.

Virgil exhales heavily, his brother’s exhaustion seeping into him. He addresses the paramedics again, “Okay, come on and put him out. He only looks like he’s done, don’t trust him. Watch his legs, he kicks like a gold-medal Olympian, ‘cuz he was.”

Despite Virgil’s warning, there’s no further resistance from Gordon, and a syringe-load of phenobarbital later, Virgil’s the one gently lifting his brother onto a gurney. With a last, lingering touch of his brother’s forehead, he finally permits the paramedics to take over. as Gordon’s whisked away into the hospital, Alan joins Virgil, hanging back in the cargo hold.

“Is he gonna be okay, Virgil?” Alan asks, his voice still smaller than it should be. “i’ve never seen him…I-I mean, I knew about the hospital thing, I knew he gets kinda weird, but I didn’t know…I didn’t think–”

Virgil puts an arm around Alan’s shoulders. “Gordon’s tough,” he assures Alan. “Let’s go hit the cafeteria. He’s in good hands.”

* * *

Scott’s been on the line with the hospital, he’s made it clear that Gordon’s coming home as soon as possible. So, with his broken arm freshly cast and a bandage beneath his eye, Gordon’s delivered out of the hospital again.

When they collect him, after four hours of waiting around the hospital, Gordon’s high as a kite. He  _giggles_  when Virgil draws a cartoony squid on his brand new cast, but grows abruptly sombre at the sight of Alan, tired and distraught and teary-eyed, and uncertain if Gordon’s still too fragile for the hug he desperately wants to give him.

“Hey. Hey, Allie. S'all right, Al.” Gordon holds out his good arm and pulls his only little brother into a tight embrace. “It’s okay. I’ve had worse.”

“Mmm.” There’s a stifled sniff and Alan squirms an arm free and holds it out to beckon to Virgil. “Bring it in, Virge,” he demands, and Virgil, naturally, obliges.

It’s a long, quiet and sleepy flight home, for everyone but Virgil, who’s going to need a long time before he can shake the memory of Gordon, cowering in the hold.


	2. one-armed bandits

Gordon was the only one who’d made it as far as his actual bedroom, when the three of them got back, and that was only because Scott had been waiting to usher him up to bed. Virgil had shrugged out of his toolbelt, kicked off his boots, and gone to collapse in a hammock he kept in the corner of the hangar. Alan had gotten as far as the living room, then curled up on the deep, plush blue carpet underneath the coffee table. Scott had dropped a blanket over him and routed all calls to his private line, so the youngest could get some rest.

Eight hours of sleep later, both Alan and Virgil were up, about, and then back to work. Scott and Kayo were similarily engaged, some rumour of the Hood getting up to his usual antics in Zurich, something about a bank vault and a scheme to crack it by filling the thing with high density expanding foam. So, a full fourteen hours later, when Gordon dragged himself out of bed and downstairs, the house was empty, except for him, Brains, and Grandma. That was fine. He could use at least a few hours without his brothers asking about just what had happened on TB2.

He didn’t really remember, didn’t really want to, and with the aid of a pair of pills and a glass of water, it was less of problem than it might have been. He lingered a little long in the bathroom, poking at the truly epic black eye he’d managed. He hadn’t had a black eye since highschool. They’re less cool looking than he remembers.

So, a little fuzzy on painkillers and generally mellowed out, Gordon wandered into the kitchen to find Grandma Tracy, attempting to cut a grapefruit in half and failing. It took him a moment to realize that this was pretty feeble from a culinary standpoint, even by Grandma’s standards. Then it clicked that she was wearing a bandage of her own, on the arm opposite his.

“Grandma! We match!” He held up his own arm, rigid in a fibreglass cast (with a custom, water-proof lining, worth every extra penny) and with a squid drawn on it by Virgil. He was going to need to get that tattoo someday. Maybe after the cast came off he’d make Virgil give him a lift to the mainland, take the plunge. It was a pretty nice looking squid.

“Morning, kiddo,” Grandma greeted him, abandoning her grapefruit and gesturing with her free hand at her bandaged wrist. “Not really. Mine’s only a sprain and I haven’t got the shiner to go with it.”

Gordon dropped onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar and slumped dramatically. “One day I’ll be pretty again,” he lamented, appropriately tragic.

Grandma ruffled his hair a little awkwardly with her good hand. “This is assuming you were pretty to begin with, squirt.”

“ _Grandma_. Ouch. And I was gonna ask if you wanted any of the very nice drugs the hospital gave me.  _Never mind_. What happened to  _you_ , anyway?”

She made a face and sighed. “Tripped over MAX. MAX isn’t allowed in house anymore.”

“Darn that MAX. You want me to help you make breakfast, Grandma? Grapefruits are terrible. No one should eat grapefruits.”

“I happen to like grapefruits.” Grandma Tracy looks at the half mangled piece of fruit, and the meat cleaver she’d been attempting to split it with. “…here, hold that for me. I wanna take another shot.”

Grandma’s got a tricky sense of humor sometimes, and Gordon shifts to sit on his good hand, protective. “Nuh uh, Grandma. How ‘bout we make pancakes instead?”

“The last time I made pancakes you and your brothers poured salt all over the table and played shuffleboard with them.”

“You’re just mad because Alan beat you at the  _definition_ of an old lady game.” Gordon grins at the memory and gets up, circling around into the kitchen to remove the cleaver from Grandma’s possession, and fetch a bowl and…well, he wasn’t exactly not sure. Probably flour. Eggs maybe. Peanut butter sounded like a good idea. Probably chocolate chips. “C'mon Grandma! Dream team! One armed bandits! Me and you!  _Pancakes_!”

“A one-armed bandit is a slot machine. I oughta drag you out to Vegas and show you a  _real_  old lady game.” But she grins right back, the genetic source of Gordon’s cocky smile. “Get a pan.”

Grandma and Gordon have more in common than gets talked about, generally. The Tracys forget about Grandma’s sense of humor, about her confidence and easy charm. Gordon, especially, forgets that Grandma’s got a way of ruffling his hair, patting his shoulder, giving him little, affectionate hugs that have a different feel to than his brothers’ gestures. He’s not much taller than Grandma, but her and Alan are the only family members he has any height on, and if the lengths of Alan’s skinny arms and legs are any indication, this isn’t going to last. Even Brains, though scrawnier, has nearly half a foot of height on him.

So Grandma doesn’t make him feel small, doesn’t treat him like he’s broken. And Grandma can make him laugh, and Grandma’s the sort of person who’ll flick him on the ear and dust him with flour when he crams a handful of chocolate chips in his mouth. And when it turns into a foodfight, and the two of them are helpless with laughter in the middle of the kitchen in the aftermath, with peanut butter everywhere and black briquettes that were supposed to be pancakes, Grandma’s the sort of person who’ll plant a Grandma style kiss on his forehead and tell him he’s going to need a bath.

MAX is permitted back in the house to clean up the kitchen. Gordon and Grandma start planning a trip to Vegas. Gordon’s still got plenty of time off, and there’s no sense being bored. And after all, slot machines only take one hand. And Las Vegas buffets are legendary. Probably there’ll be pancakes there.


End file.
